Tag Archives: bereavement

Twitter has allowed me to ‘meet’ people all around the world including the Editor of JapanToday an English language newspaper in Japan. What a stroke of luck! He kindly allowed me to send him a press release and then printed it! I feel very honoured and absolutely thrilled to know that people in Japan know about me and my self help ebooks. How marvelous the internet is for all of us! It’s life changing for me!

Here is what was printed in Japan Today:-

“New Help for those with nowhere else to turn…

Tokyo – Domestic violence, rape, bullying, depression and alcoholism are more common in relationships than we care to think. They are all issues most women don’t ever dare speak about, even to their mothers or closest friends. But the wall of silence often surrounding them means many people have nowhere to turn for help they desperately need.

Psychotherapist and Author, Susan Jane Smith, recognizes this is a problem potentially facing Japanese society, among others. Her self-help book, “Emotional Health for Emotional Wealth” offers practical, sensitive guidance on dealing with these taboo subjects and many forms of emotional pain.

Subtitled “The View from the Therapist’s Office”, the book also includes chapters on love, parenting through divorce, stress and bereavement. Smith has over 20 years’ experience as a psychotherapist in the UK and the USA. She has counselled thousands of women – and men – in ways of coping with all manner of emotional challenges, both within and outside marriage and relationships.

“Nothing shocks me,” she says. “But I know how difficult it can be for people to speak openly about things like domestic violence or abuse, particularly in non-Western cultures. My book is designed to help them confront and manage all sorts of types of emotional pain. This pain needs healing before a person can have the emotional wealth required for a happier life, hence the title of my book.”

“If you feel you can’t speak to anyone about your emotional problems or you just want to better understand how to deal with them, then “Emotional Health for Emotional Wealth” will give you support and guidance.”

Smith’s other self-help book “Pre-Marital MOT: A Relationship Inspection” is also now available in Japan. It is designed to enable betrothed couples to assess their relationship before the wedding and to highlight and hopefully address potential emotional problems. As Smith states: “Marriage is so much more than just the ceremony.”

Way back in the 1960′s, when I was a teenager, I read a book about two lads having a great time with life and I believe that paperback was called “Grab It While You Can”. The book has long since been lost or given away and the author’s name a mystery to me now. Still the title stuck with me as a way of living your life. Life seems to get shorter with age so I am firmly of the belief that you need to get on living your dreams or whatever life you want to create for yourself.

A couple of weeks ago I was traumatised when I went to see an elderly Aunt only to discover that she had fallen upstairs in her house and could not summon help. I had to get the police to break a window and a lovely ambulance man dove through and let us in. I had expected to find her dead, yet what we found was a crumpled heap - cold but alive. She had been in her very cold bedroom, on the floor in a nightie, for about 4 hours. Still she was lucky and is now in hospital and recovering. She looked so frail when I found her.

The trauma for me was that it re-created when I found my Mother dead. In both instances my body’s reaction, as I called the emergency services, was to shake uncontrollably. It has taken me all this time to be able to feel normal again. My reactions are probably worse because I struggle with Post Traumatic Stress as a result of abuse in childhood.

Nevertheless, it has been a good reminder that we all need to grab life NOW! I have so much I want to do and time seems to be shortening. When young you feel as if you have forever to accomplish your dreams. Not so…get on with it.

Bereavement and ill health are forms of loss. You can also experience loss and need to grieve when you lose a job, a pet, a friend, a relationship. Learn to understand that the process of grief is, in simplistic terms: feelings of unreality (shock), sadness, anger (yes even if unreasonably at the person who has died and abandoned you) and acceptance.

This is not a linear progression. You can be sad one minute and angry the next. The feelings can come at inappropriate times like whilst shopping. The first year is the hardest and the second is slightly easier to bear when there is a serious loss. If you feel stuck in grief do get some counselling to help you move on. Whatever you have lost cannot be returned into your life by holding on to the pain of the loss.

Luckily in my thirties I experienced ten family deaths in six years. A lot for any person. I now consider it fortunate as I was forced to learn to cope through those losses. My e-book Loss is Part of Life is available in this website’s book store or via Amazon worldwide. It was written with the intention to help provide support and understanding.